


We Can Be Heroes

by MellytheHun



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Richie Tozier, Character Death Fix, Childhood Friends, Crossover elements, Dark Comedy, Dark Humor, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier-centric, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Horror, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Resolved Sexual Tension, Richie Has The Shine, Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris Are Best Friends, Richie Tozier is a Mess, Romance, Sexual Tension, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Stanley Uris Has Powers, Stanley Uris is a Good Friend, The Shining References
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:42:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21843127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MellytheHun/pseuds/MellytheHun
Summary: Magick is strange, and abstract, and so is Time, and maybe they are interchangeable in liminal spaces, like Derry.Maybe looking for happiness, health, and goodness at the end of terrible, sad stories is a calling worth answering to.Maybe making happiness, health, and goodness in the wake of terrible sadness, and tragedy is an even higher calling to answer to.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 13
Kudos: 44
Collections: Rare Reddie Collections





	We Can Be Heroes

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by 'Heroes,' as performed by Peter Gabriel
> 
> I - I wish you could swim,  
> Like dolphins, like dolphins can swim.  
> Though nothing will keep us together...  
> We can beat them, forever, and ever.
> 
> Oh, we can be heroes... just for one day.  
> Oh, we can be heroes... just for one day.
> 
> I - I will be King.  
> And you - you will be Queen.  
> Though nothing will drive us away -  
> Oh, we can be heroes - just for one day.
> 
> Oh, we can be us... just for one day.
> 
> I - I can remember...  
> Standing - standing by the wall.  
> And the guns - shot above our heads...  
> And we kissed... as though nothing could fall...
> 
> And the shame... the shame was on the other side.
> 
> Oh, we can beat them, forever and ever.  
> And we can be heroes, just for one day.
> 
> Okay, so, I spend too much time on Twitter, and this fic is going out to several people, here we go;
> 
> red_sky: you are so wonderful, and your reviews give me life, and I hope you're well, and enjoying the holidays, and ilusm and you own a stock in this fic congratulations 
> 
> xpatxperience: Grace u know full well that I'm madly in love with u and everything i write forever will have u in mind so congratulations on the stock u own in my brain
> 
> pngdraws: your art ??/ i ? sdfkjhas okay so I take SO much inspiration from your artwork, and you're so fun on Twitter, and you're super friendly, and I thought of you a lot for this fic
> 
> jen: yoUR ART ALSO???? you're such a chill fandomer, and i'm being real w u rn, staring at tons of your artwork for creepy, long periods of time helps keep my motivation, and inspiration up
> 
> amy: YOU DONT WASH YOUR TOWEL??? has been functioning as my anti-depressant for like the last month of my life, so here's to u
> 
> Bones: you"RE SO LOVELY, AND SO IS UR WORK - your work also inspired a lot of what I saw, aesthetically, in my head while writing this fic, and I genuinely gotta thank u for that. I know you didn't mean to do it, it just happened, but you've literally been a muse for me, so thank you for all the work you share so generously 
> 
> el: you're lovely, your work is lovely, you're hilarious on Twitter, and ilu, and I thank u as well
> 
> This fic is being dedicated to so many fan artists because I spent a lot of this fic scrolling through these particular artists' works, keeping my mood right, staying inspired, motivated, and creative. I try to comment on all fan art I see, especially if I retweet/reblog it or Like it, or something, but I wanted to do something a little more special this time around, and really dedicate this work to those artists.
> 
> Y'all are so, so wonderful to share your talents so generously. Thank you all so much for what you contribute, how hard you work, and for sharing it with us all <3
> 
> All that being said, warnings for this first chapter include:
> 
> Reanimation (someone being brought back from the dead)  
> Creepy Ghost Children (I had really hoped that'd be a tag on AO3 but apparently i have to do all the work in this house)  
> Also, the movie made the timeline of Chapter 2 fuckin' incomprehensible, so I made my own.

_I remember you_ , Stan realizes - he may say that out loud, but he’s not sure a voice is something he has anymore. 

Even words that make up his thoughts (if thoughts, as he once understood them, are indeed what he’s having) seem false. Language feels like a fairytale thing, abstract, clumped, and strange, like children’s building blocks that are scattered across a floor.

He sees, but he does not have eyes, and he thinks, but has no brain, and he - exists? Maybe? But certainly not physically. 

_I know_ , she answers, and she’s smiling, and she’s terribly sad, but Stan doesn’t know how he knows all that, _I remember you too. Can you say my name?_

 _Betty Ripsom_ , Stan replies, _If you’re here, does that mean -_

_You’re dead, but you shouldn’t be._

_What do you mean? I meant to. Be dead, that is. I should be._

_I mean your friends need your help, and they tried to help me, so, I have to help you, so you can help them, Stanley. When they found my shoe, and when the clown paraded around the Neibolt house, looking like me, some part of them knew I was dead already, but they still chased after me, just in case. In case they could save me. That was dangerous to do, and it was kind of them to do._

_I don’t understand_ , Stan confesses.

 _Why didn’t you tell them that you saw the Deadlights?_ Betty asks, _When the painting of the lady attacked you, you saw into the monster’s maw, and you saw the lights. Why didn’t you tell them?_

 _I didn’t want to have seen them_ , Stan answers honestly, _I just wanted it all to be over with. I didn’t - I wasn’t brave the same way, like Bill, and Mike, and Richie, and Bev, and Eddie, or even Ben. I just - how do you even know about that? That I saw them?_

_Because I’ve been with you ever since, Stanley._

This further confuses Stan.

_How have I never noticed you? You - you, what? You’ve haunted me? For - for nearly thirty years?_

_No one sees the same thing, in the Deadlights_ , Betty responds, _We all see something different, and we all take something different from them. I saw myself get to live a happy life, get old, and die, and then I saw you, all grown up. You were just a stranger, then, so I didn’t know whose life I was seeing, but you thought of me - in the Deadlights - I don’t know why, but that pulled me forward, and I fell into you. We collided in the Deadlights, but you didn’t feel me - you were feeling too much horribleness to feel something small like me. And then I floated in your bathtub, and it filled up with blood, and I knew you were very frightened, but I couldn’t help you, and you couldn’t hear me. And then the clown pulled me down, he woke me up, and he ate me._

_You - so, you saw me, adult-me, when you were -_

_I was twelve._

_I’m so sorry_ , Stan tells her, wanting to weep for her, but unable to with no eyes, and no tears.

 _It’s not your fault. It doesn’t hurt anymore. I’m okay now. I learned a lot, in the Deadlights_ , Betty explains, _You have a glow inside you, like a candle. Everyone has it, but some people have it more than others. You have a lot of it, and when the painting lady tried to hurt you, the glow protected you. You have a strong glow, but someone else you know does too. And he needs your help._

If Stan had a head to shake, he would, and he doesn’t know how to communicate to a twelve year old ghost that he disapproves of all of this in the strongest possible terms.

_I - I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Betty, but I don’t know what -_

_If I’d have lived, I’d have passed away at seventy-six years old. The Deadlights showed me that I would live a long time, and then I’d hurt my hip, get very sick, and then die in a hospital, surrounded by the family I had made. But I didn’t survive the monster. If I had, though, I’d have lived for sixty-four more years._

_Yes…?_

_I’ve waited a very long time to give those years to you, Stanley Uris. I held onto them very tight, under the water, cause I knew the glow wouldn’t be enough - not even the big one, stuck inside your friend._

_Wait - the years of your life? You had life, like years of life that you physically held onto? To - I’m confused -_

_I don’t have all of them anymore_ , Betty tells him regretfully, _I have a little more than half, though. Some of them dissolved away, in the water, I dropped some, and one time, I swallowed one to see if it would bring me back, but all it did was make me feel very sick. I knew what you’d do, though, and I knew - the Deadlights showed me - I could give them to you. I could hold onto those years, and then, when you got hurt, I could give them to you._

_I don’t want them - I can’t go back -_

_They are all already there, back in Derry. They are wondering where you are, Stanley._

_I can’t_ , Stan might sob, _I can’t - I can’t do it. I don’t want to. Please, don’t make me go back._

_You’re remembering the boy with the curly black hair. What’s his name?_

_Richie._

_That’s the one with the glow._

_He - what, like a Deadlight?_

_No, he was born with a glow - it looks different, when someone’s born with a really big one. And he’s got a big glow. A really, really big one, right up on his forehead, between the eyes. Yours is in your chest, around your heart, and it was there always, but when you saw the Deadlights, it got bigger. People who have glows use them in different ways, and they sort of only work if you let yourself feel very strongly. Your friend - Richie, it’s like he put his glow in a box, and wouldn’t open it again. He doesn’t know he has it, and it’s so big, it could kill the monster. He needs to know._

_So, what? You - you give me your life, you give me years that were meant to be spent going to high school, and college, and making a family, and having a career, and you’re just going to transfer them over to me? Like wiring money?_

_What’s wiring money?_

_Betty, I can’t help them. I was never able to help. I was only ever in the way._

_That’s not true, and you know it._

_I know enough. I know enough to know I’m not strong enough to go back._

_You promised Bill._

_How do you know his name?_

_Cause you said, ‘I swear, Bill,’ and you saw him in your head. I saw it. I saw you make a blood oath._

_Blood oaths aren’t… legally binding. They’re better off without me, Betty. They’ll be stronger with me off - off the board._

_If you don’t take this, Stanley, Patty will never be happy again._

_Don’t say something like that!_ Stan might shout, _That’s a terrible thing to say!_

 _It’s true, though!_ Betty insists, _I saw it! She’s loved you since you were both teenagers, and she doesn’t know how to be happy in a world without you in it anymore. It’s a terrible thing, Stanley. She can love again, she can, but she won’t, she doesn’t want to. You need to take the years I have, and help your friends fight the monster, and you need to come back to her, and spend a happy life together. You made vows, Stanley. She didn’t even get to say goodbye to you._

_Enough! Stop! No more talking about Patty! You are not permitted to speak about Patty to me!_

_The monster is mocking them, Stanley._

_What?_

_You friends_ , Betty specifies, _The monster knows your friends are in Derry again, and he knows you’re dead, and he’s mocking them. He doesn’t realize I’m with you. His Deadlights can’t shine here, where we are._

Feeling the inevitability of it all creeping up on him, Stan perhaps surrenders sooner than he’d like to admit.

_Let’s say you bring me back to life, Betty - which - it doesn’t even sound like it will absolutely work - I must be in a morgue, or a funeral home by now, right?_

_I think it’s a funeral home. A very nice old man runs it with his two daughters._

_Okay, and now, according to you, I’m meant to rise from the dead, nude, I imagine, escape the funeral home unseen, get back to my home, which must be full of mourners, pack a bag, dress myself, avoid anymore detection, get in my car, and drive my happy ass up - what, seventeen hours away? To Derry, Maine? To fight a galactic monster that we have no hope of defeating, except for an inexplicable ‘glow,’ inside Richie and me, that apparently neither of us know about, or know how to use, and then, in the unlikely event that any of us survive, I’m meant to go back home, and just live the rest of my life on_ **_your_ ** _leased time? Is that the grand scheme?_

_The mourners are at Patty’s mom’s house._

If Stan had a heart still, it would sink.

_She can’t bear to be in the house without you, and she can’t be alone. I think I can keep you hidden, though. Your house is empty. It won’t be tomorrow, but it is tonight. I can help you stay a secret til you’re home, and then I think I can ride with you to Derry. I think I can. I don’t know. Once I’m near the monster again, and it’s awake, I might start floating again._

_I thought people only float if they’re alive, still. Or corporeal. Uhm - real, like, physical._

_I am still alive, kind of. The same way that you are. We aren’t really anything right now. We’re just possibilities. Like the cat in the hat._

_Do you… do you mean the cat in the box? Shrodinger’s cat?_

_No, I’m pretty sure it’s the cat in the hat._

For whatever reason, that’s what pushes Stan to accept Betty’s offer.

_Will I be able to hear you, and stuff? Once I’m alive again?_

_Yes_ , Betty answers, smiling again, _Cause now you know to listen for me._

Strangely enough, it starts in Stan’s toes - he feels them, only them, and they tingle with pins and needles. Then the sensation is moving to the soles of his feet, his heels, the bridge of his feet, up to his ankles, his calves, his knees, his thighs - and then his fingertips, resting by either side of his hips, and he feels it all. It’s slow-going, but it all comes back online, like lights in an office building waking up to the work day, flickering on from the bottom, to the top.

Somehow, at some point, he has a head again, and he knows he has a head because his head is stuck to a neck, and the neck is framed by two long slopes, rounded off by sort of knobby shoulders, and the shoulders trail down into arms, the arms attached to his torso, where he’s got a chest, and the chest has a heart inside of it that’s beating, and lungs that are expanding, and he opens his eyes, eyes he definitely has - he’s alive.

He’s breathing, and his blood is moving through him, and his eyes are focusing, and he flexes his toes, and he spreads out his fingers, and he lets out a rattling exhale.

At the sound his exhale makes, bouncing off hard matter and back into his ears, he thinks he might be in a coffin, but then the metal door at his feet is being pulled, and he blinks into the darkness, eyes adjusting until he can see Betty Ripsom, glowing before him.

“Hey,” Stan greets aloud, with a voice.

“Hello,” Betty says back to him, waving gently, “Do you feel able to stand?”

“I feel ready to try.”

“I think those are the most magical words anyone’s ever said!” she exclaims with a broad smile.

At seeing how hopeful she is, Stan melts a tiny bit more, his heart aching for her. 

“So, you have a glow too?”

“Everyone’s got a little bit of it,” Betty tells him with a shrug, watching as he struggles to lower himself from the metal table, “Just some people have more than others. Mine wasn’t much. I was really good at predicting what song would come up next on the radio, and I always knew when the phone was about to ring. I never needed help learning to ice-skate, either. I never fell, not even once.”

“And that… that’s the glow?” Stan inquires dubiously, standing on wobbly legs.

“A little bit. See? Everyone has a little bit of it. Yours is bigger, though, more powerful than just that. You were able to know when the weather was gonna turn, and you understand birds.”

He looks up to her in surprise, forgetting his shame and confusion.

“How do you -”

“I saw it,” she intercepts, “You like them, and they’ve always liked you back. You watched them, but only when it felt right to watch them, and that’s cause they talked back to you, the silent way you talked to them. You can call it intuition, if it makes you feel better, but that’s where your glow is strongest. If you’d worked really hard on it, and paid lots of attention to the glow, you could’ve talked to all kinds of animals. That would’ve been the special part of your glow.”

“I see,” Stan lies boldly, straightening up, “So - clothes…?”

“I can’t help with that part,” Betty admits regretfully, “Sorry.”

Scratching lightly at his forearms, Stan looks around the dark room, and grabs a white sheet that’s folded on a tabletop near the double doors. He wraps it around himself like a toga, and, feeling quite ridiculous, looks back at Betty.

“So, you’ll help me to get out of here? Unseen?”

“No one’s around to see you right now, but yeah,” Betty tells him, “I can unlock the doors, and I can’t make you invisible, or anything, but I can make you less noticeable.”

“Right,” Stan breathes out, “Okay. Let’s, uhm… let’s go.”

Smiling brightly, Betty hops to it, eager in a way Stan has long forgotten how to be; she shows him through the funeral home, out the back door, and then they travel parallel to the main highways, sneaking through bushes, and treelines along the back roads. With no shoes on, an entire body that feels like a limb just waking up, and cloaked in darkness, Stan slows them down quite a bit.

It takes a good hour and a half, but they make it to Stan’s house; the block is quiet, most lights are out, and his house is locked up. His is the only car in the drive, and it pains him to know that Patty won’t be in.

“It’s okay,” Betty assures him, opening his front door for him, “It’s all the more reason to get you up to Derry and back again.”

“To Derry and back again,” Stan parrots, looking around his empty house, shutting the door behind him, “Now if only Bilbo Baggins had written that story, I might have a chance at this.”

“Well, you’ll be like Bilbo Baggins in real life, though, and you’ll travel far, off into the mountains, right? Maine has mountains, doesn’t it? And you’ll kill the dragon, and free the dwarves’ homeland of the evil that’s been sitting there in muck for all those years.”

“You… you read _The Hobbit_?” Stan asks, genuinely shocked; seems like advanced reading for a twelve year old.

It’s also a startling reminder that Betty Ripsom was a very real, once very-much-alive young girl.

“My dad read it to me,” she tells him, looking shy, “You remind me of him.”

Stan doesn’t tell her that he’d always wanted a daughter like her. He doesn’t tell her that he’d always imagined a curly-haired brunette, just like her, running around his house, making his hair grey. It’s true, but he doesn’t tell her; he thinks she knows, anyway.

“Richie is crying.”

Startled again, Stan stares at her until she explains, “he’s mourning you. Your friends - they called Patty, on her cellphone, looking for you. She explained that you killed yourself yesterday night, and… and he doesn’t want to stay. He doesn’t want to fight the monster. He wants to leave Derry, and forget again. He’s angry at you. He loves you a lot.”

“Fuck.”

“That’s a bad word.”

“Sorry,” Stan apologizes, running a hand through his hair, “Okay. Okay - I’ll - okay. I’ll go pack a bag, and grab my keys, and… and, we’ll go.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Stan says again, because really, nothing about any of this is even remotely okay.

* * *

There's the Ghost of Betty Ripsom sitting in the backseat of his Lincoln MKZ, his hands are shaking, and he's got old sunglasses on, even though it's pitch black outside, because he's convinced someone will see him in the driver's seat of his car, recognize him, and alert authorities that a zombie is on the road, and he should really speak to a doctor soon about his blood pressure.

Maybe driving around at night with sunglasses on is more incriminating than anything else, though.

He wonders if people can see Betty the way he can, but if they could, he imagines she would have let him know by now. A glowing child huddled in the back of his luxury car would certainly be more troubling to a State Trooper than his sunglasses-at-night issue.

It's a little past midnight when he leaves, and he has a plan to take 85 East, onto 95 North, which will take him all the way through Maine if he lets it, but his GPS is telling him it will be at least nineteen hours before he gets to Derry.

He's intent on making it sooner.

"Can you do that?" he asks Betty, at a red light.

"Make you go faster?"

"Make... make time go faster, possibly? I don't know. Never mind. I'm not sure I know what I'm asking for, to be honest," Stan tells her.

"I can't make time different, sorry. You need to get rid of your phone, though."

"What?"

"In a few hours, people are gonna realize you're not where they left you."

"Oh, God," Stan mutters, not really having considered that, "Patty can't follow me -"

"She will," Betty tells him with certainty, "Lots of people will. Police people, and stuff. In the morning, they'll notice you're gone, and then someone will see that your car is gone too. They can find you if you keep your phone."

"How will I -"

"I can help," she assures him, "I'll know the way. There's a tug from behind my bellybutton, and it can take me there, even if my eyes were shut."

Grimacing, but nodding in agreement, Stan grips his phone, and asks, "okay - but, I should call them, shouldn't I? Tell them I'm coming -"

"No!" Betty almost shouts, looking alarmed in his rearview mirror, "No, you can't! The monster doesn't know you're okay! He thinks you're dead, and that's the only reason it's safe to do this! If your friends find out, then we can't surprise the monster!"

"Okay, okay," Stan acquiesces; he still hesitates, but he does, ultimately, toss his phone out the window, once they hit the highway.

After a few beats of silence, Betty asks, "hey - do you remember Heart?"

Smiling, Stan uses his car's computer to drum up some randomized, late 80's music, and he and Betty Ripsom drive into the long, unyielding night.


End file.
